The first edition of DDD Europe took place in Belgium, during January 26th to the 29th. Thanks to Goodgame Studios, the five of us Gregor, Marco, Marius, Oliver and myself were able to attend the conference.

It was very interesting and we could bring some valuable thoughts to share with our workmates.

TLDR; Some nice insights to remember:

  • Mimicking the real world is unrealistic.
  • software development is a learning process
  • working code is a side effect
  • Expose the real problem
  • Understanding the problem must be cheap
  • A proper implementation is Value vs Cost
  • The goal is not to write cool software. The goal is to solve the right problem

Day one

Here is the agenda;

Keynote

by Eric Evans

  • Mimicking the real world is unrealistic.
  • Maps were used for navigation

Eric showed an example of maps, which model a real thing: the world. While some maps distort the reality a bit (I.E. country sizes) they are easier to use when it comes to discerning the distance between two points in the map than the ‘accurate’ models.

While the technology has progressed a lot since then, the book and techniques are still relevant today. Even more so! The tools are so much better than

  1. This allows developers to spend relatively less time on fighting with heavyweight J2EE or ORM frameworks, and relatively more time on domain modeling.

The Charming Genius of the Apollo Guidance Computer

by Brian L. Troutwine

video

Hands-on: Bringing User Stories to Life

by Gemma Cameron

blog post

How Agile Can Cripple Effective Design Work (and what to do about it)

by Paul Rayner

slides

Arm yourself with Domain Driven Security. It’s time to slay some security trolls…

by Dan Bergh Johnsson & Daniel Deogun

slides

slides

A Board Game Night with Geeks

by Felienne Hermans

slides

The Precision Blade

by Alberto Brandolini

slides

  • “you can’t achieve simplicity without diving into chaos, just like putting all your clothes on the floor to sort them out.”
  • software development is a learning process
  • working code is a side effect
  • Event storming
    • Invite the right people
      • people with questions
      • people with answers
      • a facilitator
  • provide an unlimited modeling surface
  • model with domain events

Domain Event is:

  • Orange sticky note
  • verb at past tense
  • relevant for domain experts

Goals:

Solving the right problem?

In the core domain details make a difference

  • Creative
  • Always looking for alternatives
  • Continuously refining solutions
  • Perfectionist

Can we succeed?

  • Make the risk observable

  • Understanding the problem must be cheap
  • A proper implementation is Value vs Cost
  • The goal is not to write cool software. The goal is to solve the right problem

Open Space: Bounded Contexts: The Illustrated Bestiary

by Cyrille Martraire

Hands-on: Jef & Tom’s Awesome Modellathon

by Tom Janssens & Jef Claes

slides

Hands-on: OWASP application security vulnerabilities and what Domain-Driven Security has to say about it

by Dan Bergh Johnsson & Daniel Deogun

Amongst Models

by Yves Reynhout

slides

Cognitive Cynefin: How Language and Bias Keep Us Complicated

by Liz Keogh

slides

Day two

Here is the agenda;

Heuristics from the trenches

by Cyrille Martraire

Software Design and the Physics of Software

by Carlo Pescio

website

Hands-on: Integrating DDD, BDD and UXD

by Paul Rayner

In my opinion this was the most interesting one. We used several techniques of investigating the problem.

The proto-persona approach helped us to put ourselves into “Bob”’s shoes. It helped us to sympathize and to care about his problems.

To be continued

Evil by Design

by Jef Claes

slides

oDDs & enDs

by Vaughn Vernon

Event Sourcing and Stream Processing at Scale

by Martin Kleppmann

Slides available here

Enjoy Yourself Because You Can’t Change Anything Anyway: Immutable Data in the Real World

by Kelsey Gilmore-Innis

Hands-on: Projections Explained

by Yves Reynhout

Hands-on: EventStorming

by Alberto Brandolini

slides

Hands-on: Your business is under attack - a conceptual tour of Domain Driven Security state of the art

by Dan Bergh Johnsson & Daniel Deogun

Symmetry in Design

by Jim Coplien

A Decade of DDD, CQRS, Event Sourcing

by Greg Young

Some resources and cool insights about the conference